Rail Roko in Telangana: 124 trains cancelled, hundreds held: Police arrested hundreds of leaders and activists of Telangana movement as a three-day rail blockade began in the region on Saturday amid tension.
The three-day rail-roko (rail blockade) in the Telangana region called for by those demanding a separate state began on Saturday with protesters descending on railway stations and tracks in the hundreds and the authorities responding with massive arrests.
The rail roko comes in the midst of the people's strike called for by the Telangana Political JAC and the Telangana state government employees that entered the 33rd day on Saturday. For the last month, normal life has been totally paralysed in the nine Telangana districts and partially disrupted in the Greater Hyderabad region with public transport (APSRTC) staying off the roads, industries shut down, all citizen services in the various state government departments frozen and the academic schedule in the various educational institutions taking a big hit with the management, parents and students uncertain if their institution will function the following day.
Google announced to shut down the highly-controversial social networking product Google Buzz, along with several other services in the coming weeks, Xinhua reported.
Google on its official blog, Google announced the death penalty to its code search engine, Buzz, Jaiku which let users send updates to friends, the Google personalised homepage feature iGoogle, and the University Research Program for Google Search.
The shut-downs came as part of Google's housecleaning effort announced in early September, in which the company said it will shut down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features.
"Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today's announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome," said Google in the blog post.
Google Buzz, a social networking and messaging tool integrated into Gmail service, has been widely criticised for privacy concerns and held back the search giant from expanding its businesses to the social networking space.
After Buzz, Google launched Google+ in June, which has been receiving a good response and passed the 40 million user mark, the company's chief executive officer Larry Page said.
Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni led from the front as beleaguered India redeemed themselves with a 126-run win over England in the first one-dayer in Hyderabad on Friday.
Scorecard | Match in Pics
Dhoni smashed an unbeaten 87 off 70 balls to power the injury-ravaged world champions to 300/7 after he won the toss and chose to bat on a sluggish wicket at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
England, fresh for their overwhelming success over India at home, were shot out for 174 in 36.1 overs to hand India the early lead in the five-match series.
Captain Alastair Cook top-scored with 60, but England lost their last eight wickets for 63 runs after being comfortably placed at 111/2 in the 23rd over.
Left-arm spinner Ravinda Jadeja and off-break bowler Ravichandran Ashwin grabbed three wickets each and seamer Umesh Yadav claimed two in front of 25,000 delighted home fans.
Dhoni's men had been blanked 4-0 in the Test series and 3-0 in the one-dayers on their recent tour of England.
India, playing their first international at home since the World Cup triumph in April, were without star batsman Sachin Tendulkar and at least six other regulars, due to injury or poor form.
The hosts defended the total with a new-look bowling attack in which three specialists, Vinay Kumar, Yadav and Ashwin, had played only 25 one-dayers between them before Friday's match.
England were reduced to 40/2 by the 10th over before Cook and Jonathan Trott (26) put on 71 for the third wicket.
Jadeja turned the match around by removing both batsmen in successive overs, Cook holing out in the deep and Trott being bowled to make England 120/4.
The tourists slipped further to 134/7 as Ashwin dismissed Ravi Bopara and Tim Bresnan and Jadeja took care of the highly-rated Jonathan Bairstow.
Yadav bowled Graeme Swann and Samit Patel, before Ashwin signalled India's emphatic win by shattering the stumps of last man Jade Dernbach.
Earlier, Suresh Raina made 61 off 55 balls and added 72 for the fifth wicket with Dhoni after India were reduced to 123/4 by the 29th over.
Jadeja chipped in with 27 off 22 balls at the end as India hammered 91 runs in the last 10 overs.
England's bowlers contained the top-order despite the absence of pace spearhead James Anderson, who was rested for the five-match series, and the injured Stuart Broad.
The second one-dayer will be played in New Delhi on Monday.
England: Alastair Cook (captain), Craig Kieswetter, Jonathan Trott, Kevin Pietersen, Ravi Bopara, Jonathan Bairstow, Graeme Swann, Samit Patel, Tim Bresnan, Steven Finn, Jade Dernbach.
PSLV-C18, the Indian rocket carrying the Indo-French tropical weather satellite Megha-Tropiques and three other smaller satellites was launched on Wednesday. It is expected to launch its 50th satellite since 1993.
Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle - C18 (PSLV-C18) -- blasted off from Sriharikota spaceport, around 80km from Chennai.
It is lugging a 1,000-kg Megha Tropiques and three smaller satellites together weighing 42.6 kg.
Megha Tropiques is an Indo-French collaboration to study climatic and atmospheric changes in tropical regions and makes India the second nation in the world to launch such a space mission.
The satellite will look down at the earth from around 800 km low earth orbit and is expected to enable the India Meteorological Department (IMD) to forecast weather in a more precise manner.
The three nano satellites that will be ferried by the PSLV are the 10.9-kg SRMSAT built by the students of SRM University near Chennai, the three-kg remote sensing satellite Jugnu from the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur and the 28.7-kg VesselSat from Luxembourg to locate ships on high seas.
